Cheltenham Gold Cup day (13 March 2026) makes the perfect excuse for another rail excursion to ever-charming Moreton-in-Marsh, to photograph the luxury £799-a-head Gold Cup Special (1Z25) on its journey from London Paddington to Evesham.
This year’s special, formed of the Northern Belle Pullman coaches was top-and-tailed by West Coast Railways’ maroon-liveried 47812 and 57314 and made a fine sight as it approached and passed the Cotswold station and its array of semaphore signals.
Two days after my visit to Montrose and Craigo and the offer of a bargain-priced £19.00 ScotRail Club 50 flat-fare tempts me to max-out the opportunity and pay my first visit for more than six years to Keith Junction – a 380-mile round trip from Edinburgh, and with the first 130½ miles to Aberdeen happily being aboard another Inter7City HST set.
For the past nine years Keith Junction has been the UK’s most northerly outpost of mechanical signalling, an honour it acquired when the signal boxes at Elgin West and Forres were eliminated in October 2017, while the 2019 closure of Inverurie Signal Box has left just three other mechanically-signalled locations along the Inverness-Aberdeen route – at Huntly, Kennethmont and Insch.
Almost four years on from my only previous visit (May 2022) and the lure of a 90-mile trip aboard one of ScotRail’s comfortable Inter7City HSTs tempts me to take a journey from Edinburgh to Montrose and then a short bus ride on to Craigo, to capture HSTs passing the re-opened signal box and its quartet of semaphore signals.
Craigo is a small village five miles north of Montrose that is home to a Caledonian Railway signal box dating from 1907 and boasting a 21-lever frame. As I wrote following my previous visit, the box was routinely “switched out” for many years, but re-opened on a regular basis when Montrose-Inverurie local services began in 2018.
Exactly three years after the local authority gave its reluctant authority to Network Rail for their removal (on 3 March 2023) the two semaphore signal brackets at Bognor Regis proudly remain in use, with no sign at all of their potential removal.
So on the eve of that anniversary (2 March 2026) the promise of a fine sunny day, along with an appearance by the Inspiration 200 exhibition train, prompts me to take a bus trip to the South Coast resort to capture the charming and unchanging scene.
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